"He didn't give us even half a chance": India's captain Shubman Gill, on Sonal Dinusha's second innings.
"Sonal's innings will go down as one of the great saves of Sri Lankan Test cricket": Sri Lanka coach Gary Kirsten.
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Late on day five, Sonal Dinusha is cramping. Team-mates and support staff are out with him every few overs. His hamstrings are packing up. His calves and feet are knackered. His back needs to be rubbed by the physio often. In between balls, at the non-striker's end, Dinusha kneels sometimes, leans on his bat for support at others, and in between overs sometimes sits down. Occasionally, an India player will say a word or two to him, and the two will chat.
Many moments of the first four days of this Test had been tense. Yashasvi Jaiswal, Asitha Fernando, and Prabath Jayasuriya had all picked up demerit points for expressions of anger. Sarfaraz Khan, the substitute fielder, had chirrupped like a rusty ceiling fan for whole sessions of the Test, while Mohammad Siraj had leaned into more pointed verbals. Even the ordinarily impassive Kamindu Mendis was drawn into a conversation on day three. In the first innings especially, dismissals of Sri Lanka batters were greeted at times with the whooping and hollering that suggested India believed they had pulled off some mischief, or were mentally getting the better of a lightweight team.
They were partially correct. Many Sri Lanka batters had played like lightweights in the first innings, too many dismissals coming against the run of play. Even then, Dinusha had defied them, his 103 off 162 balls ending only when he pushed at a ball he might have otherwise blocked if he didn't have to farm the strike. He was batting with the No. 11, and was the last man out.
India, then, had come at him like raging monsoon storm-waves. They had tried to blast him out with bouncers more than once, but at no more than 5' 6" tall, Dinusha has more than a decade of experience against fast bowlers who think they can ping him on the shoulder or head. In the first innings he had unleashed two vicious pulls against Prasidh Krishna, but had otherwise ducked, swayed, ridden the bounce, and defused short-pitched bowling on a track with good lift and carry.
Having watched him prosper with the sweep and reverse in Galle, India had also attempted to close off his sweep options. But you can't put all nine fielders on the leg-side. And anyway he has the full range of sweeps, from the lap to the hard, flat one, to the straightish sweep, to several varieties of the aerial version of the shot. He slog-swept all three India frontline spinners, depositing Saransh Jain twice over the deep midwicket boundary, crashing Manav Suthar over cow corner, and hitting Ravindra Jadeja for a one-bounce four that would have been six had it carried another half-metre.
In the second innings, soon after Dinusha arrived, Sri Lanka were facing near certain defeat. The 209 for 4 he arrived to, quickly became 212 for 5, then 218 for 6, every one of Sri Lanka's recognised batters but him now dismissed. He was batting for the second time in the day, but had another entire day plus whatever else the weather would allow at the tail-end of day four. It turned out to be about 10 overs. Dinusha had gone to stumps at 7 off 37.
Day five had begun with such little hope. Not only did Dinusha only have the tail for company, India also had the second new ball to attack with. Right through the series, new balls may as well have been laced with venom the way India had cut down Sri Lanka's top order with the first one, then tended to wipe out the tail with the second.
Another great Indian wave comes at Dinusha, Prasidh and Siraj digging deep in what they hope is their final spell of the series. Dinusha defends, leaves, pulls when required, nurdles, and once even square-drives when Prasidh pitches it up. When the good balls come he is decisive, secure, unyielding. Vitally, No. 9 Keshara Nuwantha is delving into his own reserves of fortitude to produce arguably the best red-ball innings of his life. Nuwantha makes 46 in Dinusha's company, weathering the second new ball as the pair bat out 40.2 overs together, putting on 112.
Dinusha did not need to set the standard for stoic batting in this partnership, because he had already set it in his previous innings - in his 100 and his 84 in Galle, preceding the 103 in the first innings here. Right through those performances, there was barely a false shot, and certainly no rash ones. Dinusha's expression has almost uniformly been one of grim determination, a miner going to work at the coalface. Right through the day, Sri Lanka's tailenders would draw from Dinusha's own resolve. Nuwantha bats 150 balls. "I didn't know Kesh could bat that well," Kirsten later reflects.
Lahiru Kumara, better known for his eruptions than his patience, had already batted 58 balls in Dinusha's company in the first innings, and on day five, deadbats his way through a 90-ball innings. It's like watching a T-Rex trying to run a dairy farm. Kumara is fighting an array of natural instincts. With Dinusha's tenacity to draw inspiration from, he manages, somehow, to survive from just before midway in the second session, until deep into the third one. This, essentially is the partnership that carries Sri Lanka to safety. If Sri Lanka had been dismissed before tea, or even soon after it, India would have had realistic ambitions of chasing down the target.
More waves of attack come at Dinusha now, but they are not the tall, raging waters of day three and four. India are diminished now. The seamers' speeds are sagging. The spinners are hitting their lengths less frequently. They have been attempting to get balls to rag out of the rough right through the second innings, but with each new iteration of this strategy they bowl with less conviction and have wider-spread fields. The fielders themselves are labouring through every movement, some chasing balls as if they were wading through molasses. Gill is rifling through bowlers like a man searching his pockets for his house keys.
And when they come to speak to Dinusha now, it is as an equal. There is no edge to the words any more. Dinusha's flesh may be exhausted, but his spirit is still willing. Off successive balls of the 133rd over of Sri Lanka's innings, Dinusha tears back and forth on the pitch to collect reverse-swept twos.
He moves to his third hundred of the series, and his second of this Test, with a flick to deep midwicket, and allows himself a grin for the first time. His mother sheds tears in the stands. After Sri Lanka's draw becomes safe, Dinusha breaks out into another smile. "Look at their faces now," he is heard telling Kumara over the stump mic. "They're not even speaking now," Kumara shoots back.
In the 141st over of Sri Lanka's second innings, Suthar lobs a waist-high full toss at Kumara, a gift compared to the hard-spun, ripping deliveries he had been. The revs are down. His feet are dragging. He moves to the umpire to hand over his cap like he is hauling himself by the collar against his own will. By the end of the day, Suthar will have bowled 61 overs across three days. The usually indefatigable Jadeja looks fried too, though he takes Kumara's wicket in the 145th over. He had earlier left the field mid-over, hobbling, something having bruised in his right foot. By the end of his day's work, he has bowled more than 58 overs since Tuesday.
Later, there is a celebration slog. Dinusha launches Suthar over deep midwicket in the 148th over - one last, glorious sweep for the road. He now has Asitha Fernando for company, who himself wears an expression like he would rather set his own hair on fire than play a loose shot.
Eventually, nearing three full days in the field, India fade completely. Gill brings himself on to bowl, and Dinusha, a greedy batter still biting inside him, can't let a Gill long-hop go unpunished. He tonks another six. Next over, from the equally modest right arm of Jaiswal, he finds two successive fours. India introduce one final bowler into this attack - Dhruv Jurel, a wicketkeeper who has bowled all of two deliveries at first-class level. Having withstood the most monstrous waves India could muster, having defied them them for seven hours in this innings, the overs from Gill, Jaiswal and Jurel must have almost felt relaxing - just a few little ripples nipping at his feet.